A scary prospect—she’s definitely a fundamentalist, or at least pretends to be, and she could be the nominee. I’d like to think she couldn’t win the general election, but with the way Obama has thrown progressives under the bus, they won’t support him the way the did in 2008, and it could put her in a position to win. Then what? I shudder to think. Creationism in schools, an even more right-wing Supreme Court, more dismantling of social programs—the list of backward steps goes on and on. Tell me it can’t happen.

@ DarrenS: Good point! LOL I’m a veteran educator, and in my home state of Indiana (motto: Money for public schools? Why?), I have several colleagues—educated people, with a vested interest in education, obviously—who vote Republican. Sheesh. One colleague, an otherwise intelligent person—and a biology teacher!—actually went to the Glenn Beck rally. This is particularly illogical because Beck A) hates public education and public school teachers and B) hates Darwin, whose theory is the basis for the subject she teaches! It’s discouraging, to say the least.

Bachmann is the candidate for those who think Sarah Palin is just too dang intelligent. Also, it is a very sad state of affairs when the most sane candidate in the group is the Morman…..........................................PEACE

Yeah, Romney seems the least insane of the Repugs, but then when I consider the malarkey that Mormons are expected to believe—including the wholesale BS story of the greatest con man ever, Joseph Smith—maybe he’s as nuts as the rest. Of course, he could be smart enough not to believe that narrative and maybe even the rest of the Morman canon while pretending to for political purposes. Still, it will be interesting to see just how much enthusiasm he can generate among fundamentalists who find Mormonism antithetical to what they consider “real” Christianity. Could actually be fun watching that internecine fighting! LOL

New Yorker Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza spent four days with Bachmann and her staff aboard their campaign jet in mid-June. On Tuesday’s Fresh Air, he talks about his unprecedented access to the congresswoman, whom he profiles in the Aug. 15, 2011, edition of The New Yorker. The piece looks at the writers, beliefs and books that Bachmann has specifically mentioned as major influences in her life.
“To understand her, you have to understand the movement that she came out of,” Lizza tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “Her early ideological roots were formed by opposition to abortion ... and she’s always been concerned with social issues, the culture war issues. ... She takes her Christianity very seriously. She comes out of a religious evangelical conservative movement that is very much concerned with developing a biblical worldview and applying it to all corners of one’s life.”

For a number of years, Michele Bachmann’s personal website had a list of books she recommended people read. ... I was looking over the list and noticed this biography of [Robert E.] Lee by [Steven] Wilkins. [I had] never heard of Wilkins and started looking at who he was. And frankly couldn’t believe that she was recommending this book. ... It is an objectively pro-slavery book and one of the most startling things I learned about her in this piece.

Mr. LIZZA: Well, you know, I don’t want to say that everything that is written in a book that she recommends means that she believes it, right? You can’t, you don’t want to do that. What I was very careful to do is look at the thinkers that she cited as the most influential in her own life.

But there was one line from this Pearcey book that she cited as important to her…

GROSS: This is Nancy Pearcey.

Mr. LIZZA: This is Nancy Pearcey, who writes basically that believers need to be very, very careful when adopting ideas from nonbelievers. That even if once in a while - this is not an exact quote but I’m paraphrasing - even if once in a while nonbelievers get a fact wrong, it will always in some way be tainted by the non-Christian worldview it comes out of.

And I think frankly if that is what you believe, it’s very hard to absorb thinking and ideas from outside your own worldview if you believe everything else is tainted if it comes from nonbelievers.

In one respect, isn’t this what it all boils down to, the need for absolutism and certitude, in and of itself. . .

as for that religion, and all the ways people turn it into their tool,

it’s just a fractal reflecting that human need for absolutism and certitude? ... to say nothing of dominion…